Conservatives call out Labour Government’s “confused” position on ICC arrest warrants

By November 28 2024, 13:30 Latest News No Comments
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Conservative parliamentarians have urged the Labour Government to reject the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue arrest warrants against Israeli leaders, with Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel criticising Labour’s “confused messaging”.

The Conservative MP for Witham secured an Urgent Question in the House of Commons on the subject on Monday, underlining that the warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant “have no basis in international law”.

“In charging Israeli leaders alongside Hamas, the ICC appears to be drawing a moral equivalence between Israel’s war of self-defence and Hamas terrorism”, she said. The Shadow Foreign Secretary added: “We utterly reject any moral equivalence. The only beneficiaries of this decision are Hamas and their terrorist sponsors, Iran, who are now celebrating this propaganda coup as a great victory for Hamas and Hezbollah”.

The Shadow Foreign Secretary and Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick had jointly written a letter to the Prime Minister expressing their concerns that the Home Secretary’s “refusal” to clarify whether Prime Minister Netanyahu would be detained “opens the farcical spectre of your Government trying to sanction the arrest on UK soil of the leader of an ally of the UK”.

In “failing to recognise” the court’s founding principle of complementarity – intending to pursue cases where countries lack independent judiciaries – the ICC “displays clear judicial overreach. It is hard to escape the conclusion this is an activist decision, motivated by politics and not the law”, the letter continued, highlighting that Israel “is the only democracy in the Middle East and [has] one of the most advanced legal systems in the world”. ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan KC also relied upon Hamas sources and those “from UN bodies whose employees are affiliated with Hamas”, the letter outlined.

“If the ICC is to regain any legitimacy, it must act within legal norms and correct this failure of leadership. The UK should lead the diplomatic pressure to bring about this urgent change”, the Shadow Cabinet Ministers concluded.

In a separate letter to the Attorney General, Shadow Attorney General Lord Wolfson of Tredegar KC called the Government’s response to the warrants “confused, inconsistent and unclear”. He wrote that the Government’s “equivocation” on enforcement of the prospective arrest warrant, via court proceedings, “is not a tenable position”, due to the fact that arresting the Prime Minister of Israel may conflict with obligations to respect the immunity of a Head of State that is not a member of the ICC.

The Shadow Attorney General’s letter preceded statements made by France’s Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, which concurred that “immunities apply to Prime Minister Netanyahu and other ministers in question” in line with the immunities “granted to states which are not party to the ICC”.

The Labour Government has stated that “we will comply with our obligations under our membership of the ICC”, without confirming if it would arrest Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Shadow Attorney General Lord Wolfson KC (Gov.uk)

Many Conservative MPs and Lords echoed the Shadow Cabinet Members’ remarks in the House of Commons and House of Lords this week.

Rt. Hon. Sir Oliver Dowden MP outlined “two fundamental principles: first, Netanyahu is a democratically elected leader of a sovereign state; and secondly, that state is conducting a legitimate war of self-defence”. John Cooper MP also asserted that “Israel is a democracy. In the past, its courts have shown themselves unafraid to put even senior politicians on trial”.

Rt. Hon. Sir David Davis MP underscored that Israel “has an internal, independent judiciary, which puts a limit on what any Government can do in Israel. That is why equating—or appearing to equate—Netanyahu with all the other monsters that the International Criminal Court has quite properly prosecuted risks bringing the court into disrepute”.

Hon Sir Bernard Jenkin MP asked the Government to confirm that “customary international law…does not permit the arrest or delivery of the serving Prime Minister of a non-State party to the ICC”, with Paul Holmes MP adding that “seeking to arrest such a Prime Minister would not only breach our international obligations but be unlawful under the International Criminal Court Act 2001”.

Dr. Neil Shastri-Hurst MP said that “pursuant to section 23(6) of the International Criminal Court Act 2001, representatives of a non-state party to the Rome statute will remain immune from prosecution unless that non-state party expressly waives that right to the ICC”.

Bob Blackman CBE MP queried the effect the decision could have “on our relationship with the United States of America, and particularly with the incoming Administration”. In the House of Lords, Baroness Foster of Oxton asserted that “diplomatic ties with our closest ally could be harmed if we do not speak out against the ICC’s political decision to issue arrest warrants for the Prime Minister of Israel and the former Defence Minister”.

Conservative peer Lord Leigh of Hurley stated that “like the decision not to supply arms to Israel, this was a political decision, not a legal decision”. He said that the decision is “simply weaponising international justice and confirms many people’s opinion that the ICC is more a political tool than an international arbiter”.

Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel: Israel-Hezbollah deal is “cautiously welcome”, despite “a long road ahead”

The Conservatives “cautiously welcome” the new Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire deal, “while recognising there is a long road ahead”, the Shadow Foreign Secretary wrote on X.

She emphasised that Hezbollah’s confinement to the north of Lebanon’s Litani River is “key”, together with a “huge international effort”, if the “agreement is to endure”.

Calling the US-backed arrangement a “step in the right direction” toward the implementation of UN Resolution 1701, Dame Priti Patel also called on the Hamas terror group to “release all remaining hostages immediately and unconditionally”.

The ceasefire agreement, brokered by the United States and France, states that there would be an initial two-month ceasefire while Hezbollah terrorists withdraw to north of the Litani River and Israeli forces return to the Israeli side of the border with Lebanon. The buffer zone will be patrolled by UN peacekeepers and Lebanese forces.

Hezbollah has already violated the agreement and Israel has responded with strikes on Hezbollah targets, previously stating that it reserves the right to strike the terror group if it violates the truce terms.

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Conservative MPs highlight the plight of hostages after Shadow Foreign Secretary meets with mother of British hostage Emily Damari

Conservative MPs raised the plight of Israeli hostages in Hamas captivity on Tuesday in FCDO Oral Questions in the House of Commons. Conservative MP John Lamont said that “the horrors endured by the 97 Israelis and foreign nationals held hostage by Hamas terrorists in Gaza for over 13 months are unthinkable” before calling on the Government to take “further steps” to “bring home Emily Damari, a 28-year-old British citizen, and the rest of the captives”.

The Shadow Foreign Secretary recalled her conversation last week with Emily’s mother Mandy Damari. “She and many other hostage families are going through the most unimaginable suffering”, Dame Priti outlined, before urging the Government to exert “pressure” on aid agencies which have not had any contact with the hostages held in Hamas captivity. “Clearly, welfare concerns are paramount, but these poor families are also suffering unimaginable horrors and our aid budget needs to be spent in the right way”, she added.

“The root cause of so much of the terrible humanitarian suffering in the Middle East today is the regime in Tehran, fuelling the Houthis, Hamas and Hezbollah and brutally repressing its own people while bailing out Putin’s war machine, and even plotting to assassinate individuals based in the UK”, she added.

Newly elected Conservative MP Bradley Thomas said the ICC decision “does nothing to help secure the release of hostages, deliver more aid into Gaza or deliver a sustainable end to the war in the Middle East”. Aphra Brandreth MP added that arresting “the democratically elected Prime Minister of Israel… would contradict an Act of Parliament and breach state and diplomatic immunity”.

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